Fitting ships is a taxing process, it’s difficult at best to fit all that you want. During the design process one must remember to maintain the original mandate for your vessels’ tasks, ensuring that any design is not too general compromising the abilities of the ship.

Utility slots are some of the strangest, yet blessed slots on a craft of any design. Usually I miss them because my fitting skills leave a lot to be desired. Some of the best ships designs I have to date involve the utility slot, but as fittings can be incredibly tight they’re usually occupied by modules which are not really that necessary, or offline emergency modules.

I recently learnt that there is a civilian salvager. Although this module doesn’t get as good stats as a fully fledged Tech I module, it is still useful as a sort of back-up should you want to salvage. B13 recently presented me with his Firetail frigate which harbours two civilian shield boosters to maintain a somewhat weak, emergency tank. In operation it works brilliantly and can help maintain his shield while he attempts to speed tank.

Fitting ships is not an exact science and one needs to maximise the capabilities of the ship. Sometimes the only way to do this is to think outside-of-the-box. Civilian modules can certainly fulfil some minor needs as you see fit. Don’t overlook them as they can be useful, but shouldn’t be relied upon.

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If you have a utility high available, you can always put an offlined salvager in. It's unlikely that you'll be needing it in the middle of combat, and once the fight's over you can knock something else offline and use it to tidy up. As I understand it, offlined modules also make better heat sinks for overheating than onlined ones.

I also thought that the civvy salvager, like the other civvy profession modules, only worked within the tutorial missions and were not suitable for general use.